President Donald Trump’s insistence that affordability isn’t an issue amid rising prices is leading one MAGA lawmaker to break with the president and accuse him of “gaslighting voters.”
“Gaslighting the people and trying to tell them that prices have come down is not helping,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) while appearing on former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s show, NPR reported Friday.
“It's actually infuriating people because people know what they are paying at the grocery store, they know what they're paying for their kid's clothes and school supplies. They know what they're paying for their electricity bills."
Trump has repeatedly claimed that the economy is improving under his second administration; “costs are way down,” Trump said Wednesday in the Oval Office; “the affordability is much better with the Republicans,” he said last week, telling reporters he didn’t “want to hear about affordability.”
However, voters aren’t buying Trump’s assessment of the economy, according to the data. A recent poll from YouGov showed that the number of Americans who say the economy is growing worse skyrocketed to 54% as of Nov. 1, an increase of 18 percentage points from when Trump took office in January. That same poll showed that 39% described the economy as poor, an increase of 8 percentage points since Trump took office.
Even Trump’s former economic advisor is sounding the alarm that the president is underwater with voters when it comes to affordability, telling NPR Friday that voters aren’t buying his pitch anymore that costs are trending down.
"It is true factually that the average family has more purchasing power today than they did when Biden left office," said Stephen Moore, a conservative economist who advised Trump during his first administration, speaking with NPR.
"And yet people don't feel it. You know, they're not feeling the love. And I can't explain why that is except that people tend to focus on things where their prices are rising. People are kind of in a crabby mood right now when it comes to the economy.”